Full house at Derry Central Library for Felicity McCall's 'Holiday' offering

A section of the packed audience at the launch of Felicity McCall's What We Did on Our Holidays, captured by Bernie Mullen.

Scores of writers, readers, journalists, trade union activists, friends and relatives of Felicity McCall descended on Derry's Central Library on Saturday November 15th for the launch of her new short story collection What We Did on Our Holidays. (Derry News photo-spread here)

The book was launched by Jim Simpson (True Colours) another Derry-based writer whom  we’ve had the great fortune and pleasure to work with at Colmcille Press. He was an ideal choice to interrogate this masterful collection - a creator and craftsman in his own right, with a calm, reflective wisdom.

Jim interviewed Felicity about her life and her writing, which the author interspersed with readings from the new collection.

Introducing the event, Colmcille Press director Garbhán Downey said: "Felicity has served this region - in tough times and in good - as a diligent reporter and honest commentator; as a producer and editor; as a fiction writer, a screen-writer, and a playwright; as a campaigner; and, crucially, as a generous mentor, to many of us who might never have made the mark without her quiet help and guidance.

"We hear these various voices from Felicity - and many more - in What We Did on Our Holidays, an exceptional work of creative fiction – a book which is also, perhaps, a more personal and powerful memoir than anything I have ever read. For, Felicity is a writer, one of those happy few, who has decided to leave it all on the page.

"Felicity uses fiction to bare truths that others would never want to see printed. She uses it as a spotlight, not a filter. There is an honesty in this writing that is searing and sometimes even very unsettling, as happens when great writers reveal to us those truths that are not universally-acknowledged. Those truths that everyone migh prefer remain hidden. 

"But it’s not just the honesty that shines through the work. There is also an underlying compassion in this work, a self-healing, that makes even the starkest of themes - like dementia, and trauma, and catastrophic addiction - bearable and survivable, in the knowledge that there will be redemption on the other side. As she writes in her letter to her younger self at the end of the book: ‘It does get better…You will transform yourself…Fight your way out of that unhappy body and emerge.’ And as we now know - she did exactly that."

The event concluded with a questions and answers session, featuring many established authors who have worked with Felicity in writing groups in the North West - and also a contribution from her three-year-old grandson!

Speaking afterwards, a delighted Felicity said: "Thanks so much to everyone who sent good wishes, came in person and in any way supported today’s book launch- a brilliant turnout of friends from diverse areas of my life, sharing our mutual enjoyment of the power of words. Proud, humbled. grateful and happy."

What We Did on Our Holidays is available to order from the Colmcille Press shop, Waterstones and Foyle Books.

Buy the Book: £10